Kicking Balthazar’s side, Emilie galloped back to the plantation, dodging tall guinea grass and low-hanging branches. She arrived just as the ground started to tremble. The workers threw their staffs and cutlasses to the ground and ran to take shelter in the stone warehouse. Inside, they congregated with sweaty faces and worried expressions. From the drying shack, stables, and orchards, the workers scrambled to the building for safety. Emilie spied a small girl wandering in the field alone, crying pitifully. Her mother was nowhere to be found. Dismounting, Emilie picked up the child and ran with her to the shelter, pulling Balthazar behind her by his reins.
When she reached the warehouse, she placed the tearful child in her mother’s arms and looked around. Maurice and her father were nowhere to be seen. She questioned some of the workers, but they told her they had ridden off with Julien to inspect the outer edges of the plantation and hadn’t been seen since.
The sky was darkening. The rumbling noise grew stronger and more threatening. The air was tinged with the odor of sulfur, and there wasn’t a bird in the sky. A powdery gray ash began to fall over the fields like a fall of snow. Occasional fragments of stones dropped from the sky as well. It was a shocking sight. The cattle and horses mooed and neighed incessantly. The donkeys brayed, stamping their hooves in protest. The workers crossed themselves and uttered prayers out loud. Some even dropped to their knees.
Leaving the shelter of the warehouse, Emilie brought Balthazar back to the stable, and then ran home to check on her mother and Da Rosette. The ash was falling faster and beginning to collect in small piles. The smell of sulfur became pervasive, giving her a sense of foreboding. After a few minutes, her father and Maurice rode back to the house looking slightly worse for wear. Their clothes were dusted with ash, and their faces had looks of dread. Her father described the scene at the edge of the plantation, which gave rise to much dismay. Piles of ash and cinders had begun to collect, and there were bodies of dead birds lying everywhere. The falling pumice stones had destroyed some of the crops and fouled the water in the streams. The horses and donkeys would soon lack for drinking water. Her father’s face was pale, and Maurice was gasping for breath. The sulfurous air was irritating his lungs, making it difficult for him to breathe. Emilie brought him into the house and tried to make him comfortable, but her mind was racing at the disaster that seemed to be looming.
All at once, three distinct shocks like cannon fire rang out, causing the servants to cry out. Lizards scampered through the shutters, and Emilie felt her pulse racing. The blast caused glasses on the table to crash to the floor and dishes to fall from the cupboard. Panic spread throughout the house. Pictures rattled against the wall, and the chandelier began to sway. Outside, roof tiles crashed to the ground.
“Papa, it’s an earthquake,” said Emilie, looking around frantically.
“No, it’s just a tremor,” said Georges. “Nobody panic. It will soon pass.”
“They’re getting worse by the day,” said Mme Dujon, visibly shaken. “How much longer can we hold out?”
Nobody answered her. Outside the servants were shrieking in fear. They had congregated on the porch, where Emilie could hear their nervous chatter through the shutters. Beside her, Da Rosette was crossing herself and praying silently. She looked smaller and more vulnerable than Emilie had ever seen her. Thinking quickly, she grabbed her father’s binoculars and headed outside to observe the mountain up close. Looking up toward the summit, she saw a thick plume of black smoke billowing out of the crater and then spreading leeward toward Saint-Pierre, where it rained down ashes and cinders. Da Rosette hobbled toward her, her eyes full of terror. She gave Emilie a hug, but her arms never felt weaker and her eyes never looked more afraid.
“Doudou, you were right,” said the old woman. “The sulfur mountain is boiling. The Bon Dieu is angry. We must repent before it is too late.”
“Perhaps it’s already too late,” said Emilie.
The plantation was in a state of commotion. The field workers were deserting the fields in droves, calling out to each other to take cover, while in the house, the servants were running around trying to create order, picking up broken dishes and setting the furniture upright while her mother shrieked out orders. She was never good in a disaster. Many times she lost her head and had to be taken upstairs to bed. Emilie heard some coughing and hacking behind her and turned to see Maurice heading toward her. She had never seen his face so pallid or his shoulders so hunched. He looked near collapse. Da Rosette wrapped her shawl around him and set him down in a wicker chair.
“What happened to my boy?” said Da Rosette, patting his back.
Georges Dujon hurried toward Emilie and snatched the binoculars from her hand. “Blasted mountain!” he said. “It’s wreaking havoc on the harvest. At this rate we’ll lose half the crop.”
“Papa, I think we should leave for Saint-Pierre until things quiet down,” said Emilie.
Georges shook his head. “We can’t leave until the harvest is finished.”
“Look at Maurice,” she said. “The fumes from the volcano are making his lungs sicker. He needs proper care.”
Georges turned to look at Maurice and was repelled. Her brother was hunched over, coughing and spitting blood into a handkerchief. Blood streaked down his shirt, and a bloody mucous stained his handkerchief. Deathly pale, he was wheezing as if his lungs had collapsed.
Emilie rushed to his side and pushed his head back. She tried to stem the flow of blood, but Maurice was in obvious pain. He winced with each breath. Georges laid a hand on his son’s forehead, and his eyes filled with worry.
“He’s burning up with fever,” said Georges. “How long has he been this ill?”
Emilie saw raw fear in her father’s eyes, and it terrified her. Without waiting for a response, Georges called to some workers who were leading the horses back to the stable.
“Durancy! Césaire! Go and fetch Dr. Valentin—quick! Tell him Maurice is sick.”
Mme Dujon rushed outside. When she saw her son’s state, she cried out, “Da Rosette, help me get him upstairs to bed.”
Supporting Maurice on either side, Mme Dujon and Da Rosette helped Maurice back into the house.
Emilie felt a lump in her throat. “Papa, I think Maurice needs a sanitarium. The fumes from the volcano are making him worse.”
Georges shook his head. “Maurice is a strong boy. He’ll be better in a day or two. I’m sure the doctor will say as much. I only sent for him as a precaution.”
Emilie stared at her father in disbelief. Clearly he was fooling himself. Didn’t he realize Maurice was dying? Didn’t he realize that his consumption was getting worse? All at once it struck her that her father was no longer acting rationally. He was living under a grand delusion that everything would turn out fine, while in reality the world around them was falling apart. The volcano was erupting, and Maurice was slowly dying. The plantation lay in the direct path of the volcano, and it was waking up. She was sure it was going to erupt, but she had to be certain. Their lives could depend upon it. Tomorrow she would seek out the one person who could help her.
Chapter 7
Friday, April 25
When Emilie awoke the next morning, she was relieved to see only a thin wisp of smoke issuing from the crater of Mount Pelée. She hoped it was calming down, but by eight o’clock, an explosion larger than anything she had ever heard pierced the morning air. The shock caused her to drop a glass, and it shattered on the floor. The servants ran around in a frenzied state, and the workers fled the fields in droves. They headed back to their cottages in the valley, leaving their pruning sticks strewn on the ground. And then, to Emilie’s amazement, huge projectiles shot out of the crater, rising to enormous heights and then falling back against the upper flanks of the mountain. The noise of the explosions was so shocking, she felt her heart racing. She fled to the stable, saddled up Balthazar, and without a word to anyone, rode down to Saint-Pierre, hoping and praying she would find her beloved cousin Abbé M
orel. Surely he would know what to do.
Ever since she was little, Abbé Morel, or Tonton Abbé as she called him, had been a calming presence in her life. A distant cousin, he had been her tutor for as long as she could remember. She would listen for hours, wide-eyed with fascination, while he read from large volumes about natural history, botany, and geology. It was he who had taught her that volcanoes were formed from subterranean fires deep below the earth’s crust. He was patient and kind, the wisest man she had ever known. With his flashing dark eyes, spectacles, black cassock, and round-brimmed hat, he resembled a scholarly medieval monk. The times she had spent with Abbé Morel were the happiest of her life. But their time together was cut short.
Several years ago, the Archbishop of Martinique had sent Abbé to Saint Vincent to minister to the flock there. Later he was shipped off to Port of Spain and then to Guadeloupe. Finally he was relegated to the tiny godforsaken island of Carriacou, where he served as parish priest to a congregation of plantation workers and fishermen. For many years, their only source of communication was letters and postcards. But after a while, his letters stopped coming. When Emilie asked her father, he explained that Abbé Morel had grown sick and would soon be returning to Martinique. When she saw him alight from the ship, he was a changed man. He looked older and frailer. His eyes had lost their glow. The years of wandering had not been good for him. Emilie hugged him with all her might, but she could not erase the pain from his eyes. Abbé told Emilie that he had resigned his position so he could return to Saint-Pierre to tend to the convicts in the prison. Now, many months had passed since Emilie had spoken to her Tonton Abbé, and the hole he left in her heart felt like an open wound.
After crossing the stone bridge over rivière Roxelane, Emilie continued south on rue Victor Hugo until she reached rue de la Prison. She turned up the street and halted when she reached the prison. Dismounting, she tied Balthazar to a hitching post, unlatched the gate, and strode up to the entrance. The guard on duty told her that Abbé Morel was busy hearing confession, but she could wait in his office. She followed the guard down the passage past various cells containing sullen, hollow-eyed prisoners. The only sound she heard was a voice murmuring: “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been six months since my last confession . . .”
When they reached Abbé Morel’s office, the guard told her to wait inside. Removing her straw hat, Emilie sat down and wiped the sweat from her brow. There was no breeze through the shutters. The air was stuffy and humid. Outside she could hear the trickling of the water in the gutters and a rooster crowing. Occasionally a carriage would trundle down the street, but otherwise all she heard was the clanging of the prison doors and the muted voices of the convicts.
She looked around. The office was bare. There were no mementos from home, no photographs, none of his personal belongings, just a wooden desk, a bookshelf, a washbasin, and a solitary crucifix hanging on the wall.
A few minutes later, she heard the clang of a metal door and a pair of heavy footsteps plodding down the passageway, the sound echoing off the stone walls. When she saw Abbé Morel’s face in the doorway, Emilie flung herself into his arms. In an instant, time and distance melted away. In her beloved Tonton Abbé’s arms, Emilie felt like a young girl again, innocent and free, without a care in the world.
Abbé Morel looked tired in his black cassock. His eyes were the same kind eyes and his arms were the same comforting arms, but something about him was different. He laid his hand against her cheek. “My dear Emilie, I’ve missed you so.” He set his Bible down. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you. What brings you here today?”
“I’ve missed you so much, Tonton Abbé. I just had to see you. So much has happened . . .”
He plopped down in his seat, removed his round-brimmed hat, and ran his hands through his hair.
“They never told us how hard it would be to hear confession. Sometimes it breaks my heart. These poor wretches seek only one thing, absolution, and all I can offer them is my ear. But somehow it gives them a glimmer of hope. I think I’ve finally found my true calling in life.” He grinned. She thought she saw some color returning to his cheeks.
“Of course you did,” she said. “You always had a generous and kind heart. I always believed it could cut through stone.”
“I owe it all to prayer,” he said. “Oh, I struggled with it for many years. But when I finally learned to allow the Holy Spirit to pray and struggle along with me, I broke through the barrier. It was the greatest accomplishment of my life. And now I share this gift with the men. They feel as if the world has forgotten them.”
“Tonton Abbé, how can you be so peaceful when there are constant tremors and the ash clouds from the volcano? Sometimes I can barely sleep at night.”
“It’s an unfortunate side effect of living on a volcanic island,” he said. “But all the scientists claim it will calm down. Perhaps I should go to the north of the island and pray with the people there.”
“Prayer will certainly help, but I think there is something more serious at work here,” she said. “I think the volcano is going to erupt.”
Abbé Morel rubbed his chin for a minute and then went to his bookshelf. After perusing the shelf, he selected an ancient volume with yellow, mildewed pages, titled The Natural History of the French West Indies. He leafed through it, and when he found a relevant passage, he handed it to Emilie and asked her to read it:
Earthquakes belong to the phenomena of volcanic eruptions which take place in the West Indies . . .they have always preceded and accompanied the eruptions of volcanoes. Father Labat reported that there was an earthquake at the end of the 17th century when a prodigious quantity of sulfur ash and burnt stones was thrown out of a new opening in Mount Pelée . . .
“I think you’re right, my dear,” said Abbé Morel. “Perhaps M. Moreau de Jonnès is trying to warn us of an impending eruption.”
“I want to find out for sure,” she said.
Abbé Morel regarded her intently. “I see you are cooking up something. What’s going through that mind of yours?”
“I want to climb up Mount Pelée and get a good look at the crater, and I want you to come with me.”
The priest laughed. “I’m afraid my climbing days are over. But I can take you up to Morne-Rouge, where we can get a good view of the summit. With you on your horse and me on my donkey, we should be able to make it in two hours.”
After filling up a canteen with fresh spring water, they headed up the winding road to Morne-Rouge, which traced the rivière Blanche through dense tropical foliage that grew wilder and denser the steeper they climbed. Gigantic ferns, clumps of bamboo, palm trees, and balisier flowers lined their path, providing much-needed shade from the blazing sun. It was a long and arduous climb, and by the time they reached the mountain village, they were exhausted.
When they arrived in Morne-Rouge, they stopped to rest in the shade of a breadfruit tree, eating the fresh fruit and coconut cake they had purchased from one of the marketwomen. After resting awhile, they left their animals to graze while they hiked up a nearby hill. It was a long, hot climb through brush and brambles, and when they reached the top, Abbé Morel collapsed on the ground.
“My dear, either you possess the strength of an ox to climb that hill, or the angels lifted you.”
“No angels helped me, Tonton Abbé,” she said. “At least none that I could see. I’ve climbed many hills, but I’ve never seen these angels of which you speak.”
She took out her binoculars and scanned the summit of Mount Pelée, but there was no more smoke, not even a hint of a rumble. During the climb to Morne-Rouge, the volcano had completely quieted down. Somehow this made Emilie more curious. She was certain it was only a temporary reprieve.
From his breast pocket, Abbé Morel pulled out a silver flask and took a long, satisfying sip. “Ah, much better,” he said. “There’s nothing like a bit of rum to restore one’s soul.” He gazed at the ocean in the distance. “The view from h
ere is spectacular. You can almost see Dominica far off in the distance.”
Emilie plucked some grass without responding.
Abbé Morel studied her. “Emilie, I suspect you didn’t bring me up here just to study the volcano. Is there something troubling you?”
“Nothing. I’m perfectly fine,” she said, avoiding his gaze.
Abbé lifted up her chin. “Emilie, I know something’s bothering you. I’ve known you since you were a baby. I baptized you and taught you how to read, yet I see there’s much more I have to learn about you.”
She closed her eyes. “It’s so hard to talk about these things.”
“What things?” he said. “Oh, if only I could read your mind. Perhaps it’s time we got to know each other a little better. Did I ever tell you why I decided to become a priest?”
“I thought you were always a priest.”
“No, I was not born a priest,” he said. “I guess it’s time I told you the truth. What harm could come of it? Well, since this is to be my confessional, I suppose we should sit a little closer. That’s better. You know, Emilie, I never told you this, but my parents, God rest their souls, waited many years for me to enter the world. After twenty years of marriage, their prayers were finally answered. Well, at least they were partially answered. I arrived in this world like most babies, but I was not a bundle of joy. I was difficult, colicky, headstrong, and decidedly nocturnal. As I grew up, I became conceited and smug. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I never had much respect for authority, so the priesthood didn’t seem like a natural calling for me. At first I worked as a clerk, a bookkeeper, and a schoolteacher, but inside I had an unquenchable fire, a need to discover the truth. I read constantly from every book I could get my hands on. Most nights I stayed up late reading books with tiny print by the light of a kerosene lamp. One morning when I woke up, I made a startling discovery. During the night, I had gone blind! You can imagine my terror. The only way I knew it was day was by the rooster’s crow, but everything was dark. My whole world collapsed. In one fell swoop, everything I loved was taken away from me. Without the ability to read and learn, life lost all meaning. I never felt more alone in my life. The thought that I would end my life as an invalid, unable to see, unable to read, unable to learn, was too much to bear. Right then and there, I promised God that if he restored my sight, I would take my vows and enter the priesthood. And so it happened. Several days later, after much prayer, my sight was restored. Soon thereafter, I took my holy orders and entered a monastery.”
Island on Fire Page 4